Grateful for: Food

I'm struggling for ideas and motivation when it comes to blogging, and what I want the purpose of my blog to be. Is it to show my mom pictures? Is it to help me remember things? Is it so I feel less guilty about always being a ghost blog-looker? I need to figure this out soon. At any rate, there might be some exciting posts this week, so stay tuned. For those 2 readers of you that are out there.

 

I've been thinking these past few weeks about things I am grateful for and specific moments that have had an impact in my life. Today I was thinking about how I am so blessed, to have never known what it like to be without food. I grew up in a home where we always had three meals a day, and I had a mom who cooked our family a meal every night. My husband came from the same type of situation, and our children are also growing up abundantly blessed. I want to toot my horn and say that much of our edible bounty that we enjoy is because of savvy shopping, home canning, and knowing how to cook. But, the reality is that for a time in our life when we made NOTHING, we were on government programs like food stamps. And I am truly grateful for that. And, I am grateful for parents who taught Nathan and me how to clip coupons, shop sales, cook, and bottle fresh produce. I'm lucky to have a husband who insists on us having a garden, and does pretty much, um, all the work (note to self: must do SOMETHING to help with the garden next year).

Nathan showing off our ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY SIX pounds of peaches we picked this summer. Unfortunately, this was shortly after cross country started, so poor Nathan had to do a lot of the canning. The boys helped quite a bit too, which is awesome. They (and Nathan) are enjoying having so many bottled peaches to enjoy these days.

Tanner--and Nathan--picking those 196 pounds of peaches. I did think it was really neat that my boys helped pick the fruit, can the fruit, and now they eat the fruit. They did end up in a snafu on the way home with Nathan's parents though, but that is a story for another day. Something about their pickup breaking down on a mountain and all of them riding in a tow truck. Oh the memories my children will have of their childhood. :-)

Tanner proudly displaying home bottled apricot marmalade that he helped with, along with a fresh berry parfait, made with berries that we picked.

OK, enough foodie pictures. I didn't want to bore you all with another picture-less post. Now for the story that has me motivated enough to actually write a blog post.

When I was in college at BYU-Idaho we had 1:00pm church, which was a beast on fast Sundays. One Fast Sunday in particular though, will always be remembered. My roommates and I were so hungry by the end of church, but we were dreading going home because we knew that our apartment was almost completely out of food. This is one of the only times in my life that I have had nearly-bare cupboards. 

Well, 4:00pm came, and church let out, and we all looked at each other and started to head for home,dreading seeing just how bare our cupboards and freezer really were. As were started downstairs in the Manwaring Center, students were already lining up to get into the cafeteria for their Sunday dinner.  Our FHE brothers were some of the people in line, since they lived in the mens' dorms, and as such, had no kitchens but were required to buy a meal plan.  We hung our heads and begged them to let us each use a meal to be able to eat, telling them that we would pay them back.

They were more than happy to treat us to Sunday dinner (did I mention that Sunday dinner's at the BYU-Idaho cafeteria were really really good?), and told us they would certainly not let us pay them back! The gratitude I felt at that moment and the relief I felt was like no other. I don't remember what we ate that day, but I remember that it all tasted incredible, and that we had so much fun sitting with our FHE brothers, talking and laughing with them.

You never know what kind of an impact you can have on someone's life. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me" (Matthew 25:40)